Thursday, June 30, 2016

According to that useful handbook European Art of the Sixteenth Century by Stefano Zuffi (published in English translation by the Getty Museum in 2005) engraving rose to prominence during this period "... because of its versatility, technical innovations, and the work of great masters." The cheapness of production and ease of distribution also made their own pragmatic capitalist arguments in favor of these black-and-white mass-produced line-pictures.

Giacomo LauroStatue of a warrior in a niche
1585
engravingAshmolean Museum, Oxford

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Giorgio Ghisi (1520-1582) was primarily a 'reproductive' artist, engaged in high-quality copying of frescoes and easel paintings by other Italian hands than his own. He made a good share of the engravings that now represent the best surviving records of Francesco Primaticcio's lost masterpieces at Fontainebleau.

Giorgio Ghisi after PrimaticcioGods and Goddesses in Roundels (Juno, two other Goddesses, two Putti)
1560s
engravingBritish Museum

Monday, June 27, 2016

Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570) was one of the most prominent Italian artists recruited into France during the 16th century to decorate the reconstructed palace at Fontainebleau, a project to which he devoted most of his life. The Fontainebleau decorations were extensively copied in drawings and prints by other artists. This was especially fortunate because few of Primaticcio's paintings have survived. His famous ceiling frescoes and other vast schemes were deliberately obliterated by additional subsequent waves of construction, destruction, and remodeling.

To close, two rare drawings now in the British Museum from the hand of Primaticcio himself. Because he was remarkably celebrated in his lifetime, and because so little of his original work still exists, even the artist's name now carries its own legendary significance, the actual once-living person transformed into an ageless personification of tragic vulnerability.

Francesco PrimaticcioPsyche before the Gods
16th century
drawingBritish Museum

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

"My first initiation into the mysteries of the art was at the Orleans Gallery: it was there that I formed my taste, such as it is: so that I am irreclaimably of the old school of painting. I was staggered when I saw the works there collected and looked at them with wondering and longing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight: the scales fell off. A new sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before me. . . . Old Time had unlocked her treasures, and Fame stood portress at the door. We had heard the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido, Domenichino, the Carracci: – but to see them face to face, to be in the same room with their deathless productions, was like breaking some mighty spell – was almost an effect of necromancy."